E3 Expo 2009 – Do Geeks Dream of Electronics Expos?

Do Geeks Dream of Electronics Expos? They do when it comes ot E3. Unfortunately, for years all they could do was dream. Well, no more! E3 returned to the LA Convention Center halls and it was better than ever! Gaming geeks gave a sigh of relief this week when they entered the halls and attended the media conferences to find that there was no longer any need to fear… the real E3 is here! It returned to it’s truest and best form: exclusive demos, major announcements, wall-to-wall noise and lights, lots of promotional goodies, but most of all it was FUN! Sure, it wasn’t as big as it was in the old days, but that’s a good thing. A very good thing. Instead of more than 100,000 people cramming into the massive halls that couldn’t fit them, there was only about 40,000 people roaming and occasionally clustering without much trouble. Lines were reasonable, aisles were wide, and the hall lights were brighter than in the past (but not too bright). It makes for some great picture taking opportunities. (or maybe it’s just my new camera)

Today was all about filling in the gaps and making sure I covered all the bases that didn’t get covered on the previous days. I grabbed the swag (including a free pass to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen in IMAX, limited to only 150 people total, a flying slingshot monkey from Woot!, an Alan Wake Xbox faceplate, and a handful of random t-shirts), talked to a few gaming companies including Konami (Silent Hill, Ant Nation, Saw, and lots more) and Xbox (Alan Wake, Halo 3 ODST), and collected my share of blisters (by the way, don’t wear Doc Martens to a video game convention and constantly walk non-stop 8 hours a day for 3 days straight). I even got a chance to play Batman Arkham Asylum, Super Mario Bros Wii, and Splosion Man. I also met some nice people at Peregrine (a glove game controller), SureDisc (fix your game discs or DVDs by sending them off to them for a low price!), and Woot! (they love giving out monkeys and spinning lights).

In the end, it was the Xbox media briefing that stole the show with their many celebrity guests and the announcement of Project Natal. But when it comes to deciding what was the biggest game of the show, well, there is so much cutting edge stuff coming to a console or PC near you that it’s hard to pick just one. There’s something for everyone, whether it’s psychological story-driven thrillers (Alan Wake) or racing (Need for Speed Shift, Forza Motorsports 3, Mod Nation Racers) or mindbendingly brutal action fighters/shooters (Assassin’s Creed 2, Halo 3 ODST, Splinter Cell Conviction, Modern Warfare 2, God of War III, and so much more… the list goes on and on…). So much good stuff. It makes me want to own every game console, game, and gadget I saw this week. I think I’d start reviewing things regularly if I got some of these things sent to me *cough* (hint,hint).

Anyway, the last of my pictures have been uploaded to Flickr, but lots of video footage is still to come. Just give me this weekend. Expect a pretty extensive collection of crazy stuff from the last 4 days. I’m actually excited to review 328 individual clips that I shot in HD to help me remember what I actually saw this week. My memory is all kinds of blurry now as I’ve reached the end of my physical and mental rope. But enough of my bitching. After a little bit of sleep, I’ll be digging in and serving up something pretty fun by next week and slapping it up on YouTube. Thanks to everyone for the encouraging words on my pictures and videos. You can look forward to the same coverage coming this July at the San Diego Comic-Con International. But you can expect almost twice as many pictures and video. This was only a warm up…

Check out our pictures on Flickr